To sleep—perchance to dream; aye, there’s the rub!
For, in that sleep of death, what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil
Must give us pause
And so we see that our difficulties are not so easily disposed of; that it is not so easy for us, after all, to get the better of our alarms. …”
But Mordaunt Reeves heard no more of the sermon. He was back in his car, on the road to the dormy-house, and as he drove he talked to himself once more: “ ‘To be or not to be’—well, I’m damned!”
XX
Proof at Last
Reeves went to sit in Gordon’s room when he got back; his own was apt to be a port of call for stray comers, and he wanted this to be a tête-à-tête.
“I wish to God,” he started, “that I’d never been dragged into this beastly thing at all.”
“Getting a brainstorm over it? Much better take to golf again; there’s no sense in worrying over a problem that won’t be solved.”
“I have solved it.”
“What!”
“I have solved it, and I wish to God I hadn’t. Look here, Gordon, I know who it was who came into my rooms and took out my Shakespeare. It was Marryatt.”
“Yes, but you don’t mean—”
“It was Marryatt who took out my Shakespeare; he wanted to look up a quotation for his evening sermon. I know what you’ll say—it was somebody else who took the Momerie. But it wasn’t; I’ve been into Marryatt’s room, and I found it there.”
“Good Lord! Lying about?”
“It was on his table, but entirely covered with papers—I thought, purposely. I didn’t like doing it, but I felt the obvious thing was to look through those papers on Marryatt’s table. Among them was a postcard from Brotherhood, dated a week ago, thanking him for the gift of a copy of Momerie’s Immortality.”
“But, look here, the thing’s impossible! Marryatt, I mean, Marryatt isn’t the least the sort of person—”
“Yes, I know all that. I’ve thought of all that. But just look at the facts. There’s not the least doubt it was Marryatt who came into my room, yesterday afternoon, I suppose. He came in, no doubt, for the pipe-cleaner or for the Shakespeare quotation—I don’t grudge him either. Then he must have seen the Momerie on the shelf, and I suppose couldn’t help taking it; he didn’t feel safe as long as the thing was in my hands. He is, of course, just the height Carmichael mentioned; he does smoke Worker’s Army Cut; his pipes always are foul.”
“Yes, but he may have wanted the Momerie for anything.”
“Why did he never tell me he’d taken it? Look here, you’ve got to face the facts. Let me marshal them for you; you can imagine I’ve been thinking them out pretty furiously. First, Marryatt had a reason for disliking Brotherhood.”
“For disliking him, yes; but not for wanting to murder him.”
“Of course to you and me it wouldn’t seem so; we don’t know the clerical temper from the inside. After all, Marryatt has a hard time of it in any case, trying to knock a little piety out of these villagers. What must he think of the man who comes and tries to take away what beliefs they’ve got?”
“All right, go on. Of course, it’s quite impossible.”
“Next point: it was Marryatt who gave Brotherhood that Momerie book. Brotherhood, of course, took it up to London with him in the train on Monday, but is it likely that anybody would notice it particularly? The one man who knew for certain that it was in his possession was the man who had given it to him.”
“But did Marryatt know anything about Brotherhood’s connection with Miss Rendall-Smith—about his promise to her?”
“We’ll come to that presently. It doesn’t arise yet, if you consider the actual wording of the cipher-message. What it said was, ‘You will perish if you go back upon your faith’—I now read that as a purely theological message, and I know of only one man in the neighbourhood who would have been likely to send such a message.”
“You seem to be pressing words rather far.”
“Next point: Marryatt did travel by the three o’clock train on Tuesday. He made no secret of the fact; he told us about it—why? Precisely because he had arranged the murder so as to look as if it was connected with the 3:47: the three o’clock train was his alibi, and he was determined to get his alibi well rubbed in. Don’t you remember, just before we found the body, the discussion we all had in the smoking-room about crime, and how Marryatt said it was very important for the criminal to behave naturally in company, so as to establish his alibi? Well, that’s what he was doing at the moment.”
“I’d forgotten his saying that.”
“It doesn’t do to forget these things. You’ve probably forgotten that it was Marryatt who started the whole subject, by saying it was the kind of afternoon when one would want to murder somebody. You see, he couldn’t get the subject out of his mind, and he thought the easiest way to get it off his chest was to start talking about murder, quite naturally, in an abstract sort of way.”
“You’re making him out a pretty cool customer.”
“He was, up to a point. Remember, he started out on a round, knowing that the body of his victim lay under the railway arch. Only at the third tee his nerve deserted him, and he pulled his drive.”
“Yes, but hang it all, anybody—”
“I’m only mentioning the fact; I don’t say there was necessarily anything significant about it. Anyhow, I sliced mine, and so we came to find Brotherhood’s body. And that was too much for him; you will remember
